Stateless people are individuals who are not recognized as citizens by any country in the world, and consequently are denied basic human rights – rights that individuals often take for granted: right to health care, to education, to own property, to travel, to get a birth or death certificate, etc. Without protection from any state due to their lack of legal identity, stateless people are vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation, violence. Women and children are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.

Convinced that “Compassion and care for one another and acknowledging the image of God in all humanity is at the core of our Christian identity and an expression of Christian discipleship” (WCC Assembly statement), the WCC has stepped up its advocacy efforts for the right to a nationality of stateless people and encouraged its constituency to contribute to ending statelessness in their own context. The Den Dolder Recommendations invite churches, for instance, to “creatively use their opportunities for registering important life events – such as birth, baptism, confirmation, marriage, and death – in ways that help people to secure documents that help reduce statelessness”.

In close collaboration with the Statelessness Section of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), WCC has been encouraging member churches to promote birth registration and gender equality in nationality laws.

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An “Interfaith Symposium on Statelessness” held 7-8 December in Rome focused, for the first time in history, on joint actions from Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian and Jewish groups to address statelessness.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, revealed in October that at the end of 2016 the number of people displaced from their homes due to conflict and persecution was a record 65.6 million, with 22.5 million of them refugees.